The Kin (27 page)

She called her children to her
.

She said, “Sons, you must go no more to the Good Places where people live. You must go to your own Places. These are the dry deserts and the snowy mountains and the dark woods. Do this, or the First Ones destroy me.”

They said, “Mother, what food is there for us in these Places?”

She said, “The hunter wounds a fat deer. He tracks it into the desert. The wanderer sees the snow. He says in his heart, I climb to look at that stuff. The child does not answer his mother's call. He strays into the forest. Thus food comes to you, my sons, a little and a little.”

The demons obeyed their mother. They come no more to the Good Places. They wait in their own Places, the Demon Places. They are hungry
.

But Sol said, “Vona, take my hand and lead me, for I am an old man and blind.”

Vona took his hand and led him out of the Pit beneath Odutu
.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fang, as the leader of the canyon people, came down from the outcrop to meet them. Several of the other men came with him. Noli was delighted to see Tor, and instead of waiting for the leaders to greet each other, she went straight to him and hugged him. He laughed and rumpled her hair.

Someone had put fresh bindings on his splint. She touched them gently.

“How is your arm?” she whispered. Her throat was too sore to make the little questioning bark the canyon people would have used to ask something like this.

Tor answered with a quiet double grunt to tell her that his arm was doing all right.

He grunted again on a rising note, looking at her as he did so.

How about you?
he was saying.

“Tor, I am well,” she croaked, smiling to show what she meant. “We are all well. And see, we meet with our friends.”

She gestured towards Bal. He was standing facing Fang. The two leaders were studying each other with distrust and doubt. Their hair was half bushed and their attitudes very tense. Bal was ready to fight, and Fang knew it, but both were unsure of themselves.

Noli could see that Bal was still pretty shaken from hearing a First One—a First One he didn't know existed—speaking through Noli's mouth. By now, Fang was used to the Moonhawks he knew, but they were young. These adult strangers were something else.

They hesitated, waiting for each other to make the next move, until Suth took things into his own hands by stepping between them and facing Fang with his right palm raised. Through closed lips he made a soft, humming growl in his throat.

Fang put his palm against Suth's and replied with a shorter sound, made the same way. The Moonhawks had often seen the canyon men greet each other like this, when they met after a day's hunting.

Suth turned. “Bal,” he said. “Here is Fang. Do you greet him? Do you raise your hand as he does?”

Bal hesitated, but stepped forward and sulkily raised his hand. Fang, luckily, decided to treat Bal as an equal by not waiting until the movement was finished, but raising his hand at the same time to touch palms.

“I, Bal, greet Fang,” Bal muttered, and Fang answered with his throat sound.

The tension eased. The men of both parties greeted each other briefly. There was a bit of milling around, and then Kern said, “We are many. One fire is not enough.”

With signs and grunts, Suth explained to the canyon people. All the men, and any women who didn't have children to care for, went off to gather fuel.

That evening the top of the outcrop was rather crowded. They made three fires, one for the Moonhawks, and two for the canyon people, but there was plenty of coming and going as Ko and Mana trotted off to look for friends and inquisitive canyon people came to inspect the newcomers.

Noli sat with Goma for a while, not trying to say anything but simply being with her as she suckled her baby, with the firelight rippling across her glossy brown skin.

She felt wonderfully peaceful and content. Into that peace, the First One came. It came not as a huge invading power, but gently, a soft tingling on her whole skin, which then flowed inward and filled her body right to her fingertips and toes. It was like having the warmth of the fire inside her.

She heard Goma's quiet sigh, and knew she was sharing the moment.

The First One spoke. Its voice made no sound in Noli's mind, yet it spoke to her in words.
These are my people
, it said.
They are Porcupine. I come to Goma. Noli, Moonhawk is gone. She does not come to you any more. I come to you. But you are Moonhawk still, and these are Porcupine
.

There were no more words. Gently the feeling faded. As it went, Noli's body shuddered. She saw the baby let go of the nipple and look up, startled, so she guessed Goma must have shuddered at the same moment. They looked at each other, nodded, and smiled.

Noli stayed a little longer. Goma let her hold the baby for a bit, then she gave it back and returned to the Moonhawks.

She found an argument going on. Bal wanted all the Moonhawks to move off the next day and go to a different part of the plain, leaving the canyon people here, and then having as little as possible to do with them.

The women disagreed. They were afraid of the lion. They didn't think there were enough Moonhawks to keep their small ones safe all the time. The men would surely want to go off hunting by themselves before long. It was much safer to stay in a large group, all together.

The men wanted it both ways. They were uncomfortable about living alongside the canyon people, but they also longed to hunt, and they weren't really enough for that, just the Moonhawk men alone. Bal's authority was shakier than it used to be in the old days, but he was still the leader, and what he said carried weight.

In the end, Net settled the argument.

“The lion trap is here,” he said. “Let us kill this lion with our trap. Then the small ones are safe, and we men can hunt.”

Five days passed. Nothing special happened, but the two groups became more used to each other. Noli didn't feel confident enough to stand up in front of all the Moonhawks and tell them what the First One had said to her, but she told Suth, and they began calling the canyon people Porcupine when they needed to talk about them, just as they used to talk about Crocodile and Parrot and the other Kins in the old days.

The women took it up, and in the end the men did the same, even Bal.

On the sixth day, several men from both groups went hunting together and came back in triumph with two half-grown deer that they'd managed to corner and kill. That evening there was great feasting and boasting.

All this time they saw no sign of the demon lion, but a few days after the feast a family of lions approached the group of trees where the people had just settled for their midday rest, obviously expecting to rest there themselves. Everyone rose and formed a compact body to face them, with the small ones in the middle. They yelled and shook digging sticks and hurled rocks. The lions studied them disgustedly and went off elsewhere.

By now the group had pretty well stripped all the food from the area around their main lair, so they were forced to move off and find other lairs. The men didn't hunt every day, but when they did they usually killed something, because the animals on this plain weren't used to people and were easier to catch than they'd been in the old Good Places.

A moon passed. Then, when they were a good three days' journey from the outcrop with the lion trap, the demon lion appeared.

The men hadn't gone hunting that day, and they were all foraging together in a scattered line when something said
Danger
in Noli's mind. The hair on her nape tried to stand up. A moment later she heard Goma's cry of alarm floating across the hot plain.

She looked up. Goma was standing halfway along the line, pointing at something behind them. Noli couldn't see what it was, but the feeling in her mind told her.

“The lion is here,” she called to Suth. “Goma sees it.”

He turned and made
Danger
barks to the Porcupines foraging beyond him. They all stopped what they were doing, gathered together, and went to join the group that had formed around Goma.

By now they could all see the lion. It must have realized that they knew it was there and was making no effort to stalk them, but was just standing and watching them, about as far away as a strong man could throw a stone.

It yawned. Its tail twitched. It lowered its head and gave a loose, coughing roar.

There was a moment's silence, then everyone broke into furious shouts and screams. The lion watched them but didn't move.

Keeping close together, they started towards it, picking up any stones they could find. Some of the men darted forward and threw. The lion backed away, but stopped again just out of range, and stood and looked at them.

Twice more they marched towards it and the same thing happened, so they split into two groups. Half the men stayed to guard the children, and the rest, including the women who didn't have small ones, formed a line and charged towards the lion, not stopping when it moved away but keeping steadily after it.

By now they'd hit it with several stones and it had learned to keep out of range, so it loped away, with the people still following it.

Without warning it swung left and broke into a gallop, outflanking its pursuers and coming at full tilt towards the group around the children. The pursuers raced after it, but the lion was faster. Adults, and anyone else old enough to throw a stone, massed to meet it.

Perhaps it misjudged the distance, or perhaps it was hungry enough to try to charge straight in and snatch somebody away, for it got too close and ran into a hail of stones.

It yelped, changed its mind, and backed off.

It was circling the group, looking for an opening, when the others came panting back and drove it off again.

This time they didn't need to chase it far before it gave up for real and padded away into the distance.

They made sure the lion was well out of sight before they started foraging again, and then they set lookouts, and kept even closer together than before. Twice more the lion was seen, far off, and the second time was later in the afternoon, when they'd already started for the outcrop where they were planning to lair that night. The Porcupines muttered anxiously.

“I think it follows us,” said Suth.

“Suth, you are right,” said Noli.

They gathered plenty of wood, kept fires going all night, and kept watch at the places where the outcrop could be climbed. There was a good half moon, and nobody saw the lion, but they heard its hoarse roar rising several times from the darkness.

They didn't see it at all the next day, but Noli could sense it not very far off, still moving along with them.

And again when they laired that evening and sat around their fires in the early dark, they heard the same long, rasping roar breaking the silence.

They all looked at each other.

“This is good,” said someone. “It follows us back to the place where we have our trap.”

Noli looked at Suth where he sat with the men, and caught his eye. She rose and beckoned to him. They moved a little apart. She laid her hand on his arm.

“Suth,” she said, “hear me. I, Noli, ask. I fear. I am sick with my fear. This lion is a demon lion.”

“I fear also,” Suth began. “But …”

“No, Suth, hear me,” she interrupted. “It is a demon lion. But it must eat, or it dies. It is demon, it is lion. The demon eats people. The lion eats all meats, or it dies. The lion is old. He cannot hunt well. No females help him hunt. He is hungry. Tomorrow we go back to the lair where the trap is. As we go, let the men hunt. Let them catch fat deer. Let them take it to the rock. The lion comes. The men put meat at the trap, good deer meat. The demon is hungry for people meat, but the lion is hungry for all meat. The moon is big. The men watch from above. They are ready. The lion comes to the meat. The men drop rocks, kill the lion. He is dead. No danger to Tinu. Is this good?”

He thought about it and nodded. “Noli, this is good,” he said. “I speak with the men.”

When they went back to the fire, Noli settled near enough to hear what was said. The men didn't agree at once. They'd put a lot of effort into building their trap. And if they did catch a deer, why waste good deer meat on a lion? Tinu would be better bait. Besides, they'd only partly accepted that Suth counted as a man. He was too young, really, so they didn't like to agree with him too easily. In the end, Noli guessed, they did so because they were glad of the excuse for a day's hunting.

There was a fresh problem. They had only the four Moonhawk men: Bal, Net, Kern, and Suth. More were needed to make a good hunting team, but when Suth went the next morning to invite some of the Porcupines to join them, they refused. With grunts and signs he got them to understand what he wanted, but not why. He needed words for that, and the Porcupines didn't have them. As far as they could see, it was far more important to help guard the foragers, with the demon lion still following, than it was to hunt for extra meat.

In the end Suth gave up and the Moonhawk men went off on their own, though with only four of them they'd need to be lucky to kill anything.

Noli, Tinu, and the small ones stayed with the Porcupines as they worked their way back to the outcrop. For the first half of the day they foraged as they went, but then they reached the area they'd already stripped, so they went to the river and drank and filled their gourds.

Just as they were leaving, the lookouts saw a single lion crossing a patch of open ground to their right. It was too far off for them to be sure it was the demon lion, but this was now the hottest part of the day, when all normal lions would be resting in the shade.

Everybody became very nervous, and instead of looking for shade nearby, they insisted on heading back for the outcrop.

They reached it with the sun still high in the sky. Except for the ledge above the trap, there was no shade at all at the top, and only a strip along the base on the eastern side, so they posted lookouts up on the ledge and settled down below.